When Does Variable Rate Technology for Agricultural Sprayers Pay? A Case Study for Cotton Production in Tennessee

Agricultural producers face a multitude of preand post-emergence input application decisions, including herbicides, insecticides, plant growth regulators and harvest aids. Many of these inputs are applied on a repetitive basis, resulting in multiple trips across the field and increased chemical, labor and application costs. Variable rate technology (VRT) for self-propelled, boom-type agricultural sprayers may reduce these chemical and application costs. A VRT system is a package of precision agriculture technologies that are used jointly to: (i) measure the spatial variability of input needs within a farm field; (ii) prescribe site-specific application rates that match varying crop needs; and (iii) apply those inputs as prescribed (Ess, Morgan and Parsons, 2001). This contrasts with uniform rate technology (URT) where the goal is to maintain a constant application rate across the entire field.